Click the link to read the article on the Center for Colorado River Studies website (Jack Schmidt):

December 3, 2024

Drawdown of the Colorado River’s reservoirs now slightly exceeds the amount of gain that occurred during the 2024 snowmelt season. For the next four months until snowmelt begins again, the basin’s reservoirs will be drawing from the excess accumulated in 2023, demonstrating the immense challenge in balancing water consumption with supply.

In Detail…

On 30 November 2024, total basin reservoir storage was 27.5 million af (acre feet)¹, approximately two years’ supply at today’s rate of consumptive use and loss (Fig. 1). That amount is 43% of the maximum system contents of July 1983² and is the same amount as at the beginning of July 2021 when the basin’s water managers were beginning to get worried. Conditions are not quite as bleak as in summer 2021, because that year’s snowmelt season had already passed. Now, we can hope that the 2025 snowmelt season might be a good one. Nevertheless, reservoir storage is the bank account from which we draw to maintain the economy of the American Southwest and parts of northwestern Mexico. It would be preferable for there to be more water in that account.

Approximately 63% of current total reservoir storage is in Lake Mead and Lake Powell. Presently, there is approximately 400,000 af more water in Lake Powell than in Lake Mead, but the contents of Lake Powell are slowly being depleted. The contents of Lake Mead held fairly constant during the past month. The contents of Lake Powell decreased by approximately 4300 af/day during November, but the contents of Lake Mead decreased by only 800 af/day (Fig. 2). Upstream from Lake Powell, Colorado River Storage Project (CRSP) initial unit reservoirs, as well as Fontenelle Reservoir, decreased by only 600 af/day in November, and other Upper Basin reservoirs lost even less (400 af/day).

Basin reservoir storage must be increased to improve the security of our water supply. We need to increase the balance in our “bank account,” and the only way to do that is to spend less than the amount of our actual water “income.” Most of our income arrives during the snowmelt season of late spring and early summer. Mid- and late-summer, fall, winter, and early spring is the period when we spend the snowmelt-season income, although summer rains and groundwater inflow offset some of our uses.

Occasionally, we have an unusually snowy winter, and the basin’s reservoirs significantly refill. 2023 was one of those years. Reclamation estimates that the natural flow of the Upper Basin³ was 17.4 million af in 2023, the third largest of the 21^st century (after 2011 and 2019), and total basin storage increased by 8.38 million af, only exceeded by the increase in storage in 2011⁴. 2024 was a moderately snowy winter.

2024 was a different story, however. The NRCS estimated that the peak snow water content in 2024 was 14% greater than the 30-year average, but dry soils and other effects of a warming climate limited natural flows to between 11.9 and 12.1 million af, which is less than the average for the 21^st century⁵. In 2024, the basin’s reservoirs increased in storage by 2.45 million af. The drawdown of the basin’s reservoirs as of 30 November was 2.46 million af, slightly more than the gain from snowmelt (Fig. 3). The contents of Lake Mead and Lake Powell increased by 1.39 million af in 2024, and the drawdown in those two reservoirs has been 1.07 million af this year. During the next four months, the basin will begin drawing from storage that accumulated in 2023.

Drawdown of the basin’s reservoirs has been much greater in 2024 than in 2023. The amount of drawdown between early summer and today is slightly more than the median drawdown for the past 15 years⁶ and is 43% greater than the drawdown at this time last year (Table 1). The drawdown of Lake Mead and Lake Powell in 2024 is slightly less than the median for the past 15 years⁷ but is 98% greater than it was at this time last year.

There are many details ignored in this overview. Reservoir drawdown in the Upper Basin is not only determined by consumptive use, but also by reservoir operating rules that require winter drawdown and by requirements to provide environmental flows. Water use in southern California is significantly affected by water supply available from northern California, the Owens River, and locally. Nevertheless, every drop of water released from upstream is used, lost, or stored in a downstream reservoir, and total basin storage is the only available supply to make up the shortfall between annual precipitation and annual use.

Conservation in the Lower Basin and in Mexico is reducing drawdown in Lake Mead, and the storage contents of Lake Mead are likely to increase during the next few months as water is delivered from upstream. Drawdown of the total contents of Lake Mead and Lake Powell is still 0.32 million af less than what accumulated there from the 2024 inflow season and a 2024 deficit might not occur is Lower Basin water use is drastically reduced or if Upper Basin reservoirs are emptied.

Efforts to date to reduce water consumption in the basin have been significant, and required a significant investment by the federal government. Despite those efforts, we have four months ahead of us before snowmelt in 2025 begins, and we are likely to begin deficit spending unless radical changes in use are immediately implemented. The challenge faced by the federal government, Mexico, the seven basin states, every tribe, and every water user is immense and is not solely restricted to negotiating the post-2026 agreements. We remain in a water crisis today, and the time to greatly reduce water consumption is right now in the present moment. [ed. emphasis mine]

• [1] Basin reservoir storage is for 46 reservoirs reported by the Bureau of Reclamation in its Hydrodata base https://www.usbr.gov/uc/water/hydrodata/reservoir_data/site_map.html.
• [2] There was 63.6 million af of storage in the basin on 15 July 1983. Some of this storage exceeded the generally accepted capacity of some reservoirs, notably Lake Powell.
• [3] at Lees Ferry
• [4] Basin reservoir storage increased by 8.78 million af in 2011.
• [5] Natural flows for calendar year and water year 2024 were 12.1 and 11.9 million af, respectively, based on Reclamation’s 12 September 2024 estimate. The average natural flow at Lees Ferry between 2000 and 2024 was 12.4 million af/yr, based on Reclamation’s estimates.
• [6] The median drawdown between the summer peak and 30 November during the past 15 years was 2.26 million af for the 46 reservoirs of the watershed.
• [7] The median drawdown between the summer peak and 30 November during the past 15 years was 1.16 million af for the total contents of Lake Mead and Lake Powell.
• [8]  Includes drawdown of Lake Mohave and Lake Havasu.

Click the link to read the article on the Utah News Dispatch website (Jennifer Solis):

December 8, 2024

Western states that rely on the Colorado River are in a heated deadlock over how to manage the troubled river, and are doubling down on their own regional plans, despite growing pressure from the federal government to reach a compromise.

Top water officials for the seven Colorado River Basin states — Arizona, California, Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming — gathered for the Colorado River Water Users Association conference at the Paris Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas Thursday.

But for the first time in years, representatives from Lower Basin states — Nevada, Arizona, and California — and Upper Basin states — Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming — did not appear on a panel together or meet during the conference to negotiate the future of the Colorado River.

“It’s been customary that we get together beforehand,” said Colorado River Commissioner for Colorado, Becky Mitchell, during a news conference. “Unfortunately, we weren’t able to do that. I don’t think that means that we will never be able to do that again. It just means this time we weren’t.”

Nine months ago, the two basins submitted competing water management plans to the federal government after state negotiators could not reach a consensus on how to share the river’s dwindling water supply.

Since then, the basin states have not moved any closer to negotiating a compromise on how to equitably share and cut Colorado River water use once current management rules expire in 2026, leaving states up a creek without a paddle.

One of the biggest sticking points between the two basins is whether or not Upper Basin states should absorb mandatory water cuts during dry years, despite using significantly less than their 7.5 million acre-feet Colorado River allocation year-after-year.

Historically, Lower Basin states have used nearly all their 7.5 million acre-feet Colorado River allocation under the 1922 Colorado River Compact, compared to the 4.5 million acres-feet used by the Upper Basin states.

Lower Basin states argued all seven states should share water cuts during dry years under the new post-2026 guidelines. If they don’t, downstream states warned they could face water cuts they can’t feasibly absorb.

Those tensions were reflected Thursday when Lower Basin water managers told a ballroom full of water managers, researchers, agricultural producers and others from across the drought-stricken river that if their Upper Basin counterparts did not sign onto the Lower Basin plan and accept cuts, they would be at greater risk of triggering a “compact call,” which could force cuts on the Upper Basin.

Upper Basin states argue they don’t have the legal authority to significantly reduce flows to water users on their own under the 1922 Colorado River Compact, unlike Lower Basin states.

“They might have that authority if we make a compact call. So perhaps we’ll make that compact call, then they’ll have the authority to cut flows,” said Tom Buschatzke, Arizona’s top Colorado River negotiator. “Maybe that’s an easy path compared to going to their water users with some voluntary program or their legislatures to get authorities to do the things we have to do in the Lower Basin.”

In September, Buschatzke asked Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs to set aside $1 million for litigation in the event states can’t reach a compromise and Arizona needs to take the issue to court.

“I have to do my due diligence for all potential outcomes,” said Buchatzke about his request.

Negotiators in both the Lower and Upper Basin states all acknowledged they have three options to decide how states will share the river’s waning water supply going forward: litigation, legislation or negotiation.

“When we put forward our Lower Basin alternative, we were looking to offer a compromise,” said JB Hamby, Colorado River Commissioner for California. “We want a seven state agreement. We don’t want to have to go litigate stuff and force these really difficult outcomes in the Upper Basin.”

Mitchell, the Colorado River Commissioner for Colorado, was critical of how the Lower Basin states have approached negotiations with the Upper Basin.

“I think going in, not willing to change your deal at all, is probably the first problem. You cannot say there’s a compromise, if we have to accept a deal in its entirety,” Mitchell said, adding that Upper Basin states are open to adjustments to their plan.

To spur a compromise, the federal government released an initial outline detailing four different river management options last month, including a hybrid management option that blends components from both basin state plans.

Representatives for both camps said they would need to see more details before throwing their weight behind any of the federal management proposals.

“They did provide a bit of additional information today as to some of the elements, but still not enough,” said Estevan Lopez, New Mexico’s representative on Colorado River matters, during a news conference Thursday.

Representatives for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation said the agency intends to publish a more detailed analysis of the federal proposals by the end of the year. Maximum cuts could range from 2.1 million acre-feet to 4 million acre-feet, which could be divided based on who has the oldest rights, or distributed proportionally across all seven states.

Despite the lack of comradery among the Lower and Upper Basin states at the annual conference, both camps expressed optimism they could reach a compromise, eventually.

“I want everybody from the upper basin to hear from Nevada: We believe compromise is possible. We think it’s the first, second and third best option. But we need a dance partner, so let’s get back to the table and make this happen,” said John Entsminger, Nevada’s representative on river issues and general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority.

Mitchell said it was clear to her from panel presentations during the conference that all seven states want to reach a consensus plan on how to manage the future of the Colorado River.

“I think there’s still a possibility. I’m still hopeful. And I think if we want a seven state consensus, we’re going to have to have seven leaders come to the table,” Mitchell continued.

Brandon Gebhart, Wyoming’s state engineer and Colorado River negotiator, said he believes the seven Colorado River Basin states can come up with a better management plan than one imposed by the federal government, although “it won’t happen next week.”

“We really need to understand that the enemy we’re battling right now is not the Upper Basin, it’s not the Lower Basin. It’s hydrology,” Gebhart said.

Nevada Current is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Nevada Current maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Hugh Jackson for questions: info@nevadacurrent.com. Follow Nevada Current on Facebook and X.

Click the link to read the article on the KUNC website (Alex Hager):

December 6, 2024

This story is part of ongoing coverage of the Colorado River, produced by KUNC in Colorado and supported by the Walton Family Foundation. KUNC is solely responsible for its editorial coverage.

States that use the Colorado River have spent the better part of 2024 deadlocked about how to share its shrinking water supplies, and annual water meetings in Las Vegas laid bare how far those states are from an agreement.

The seven states can’t agree on who should feel the pain of water cutbacks during dry times. The river is getting smaller due to climate change, and states need to come up with new rules to share its water.

Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and New Mexico make up the Upper Basin. California, Arizona and Nevada represent the Lower Basin. The current rules for sharing water expire in 2026, and each group has submitted a separate proposal for new guidelines after that point.

In Las Vegas, the Colorado River Water Users Association annual conference provided a rare peek behind the curtain of talks between those states. Surrounded by the golden wallpaper and shimmering chandeliers of the Paris Hotel, policymakers showed little progress towards an agreement but brought plenty of bluster.

In recent years, negotiators from all seven states have appeared on one panel together. This year, amid their public disagreement, they appeared on stage at separate times.

State leaders made subtle and not-so-subtle jabs at their counterparts, alleging an unwillingness to use less water. Between those jabs, though, they preached the value of collaboration.

“We have this conference so that we can try to pull together, not pull apart,” said Gene Shawcroft, Utah’s top Colorado River official.

Some of Shawcroft’s downstream neighbors also urged togetherness.

“I’m not looking for a fight,” said John Entsminger, Nevada’s delegate. “We need a dance partner, so let’s get back to the table and make this happen.”

Others were less gentle with their choice of words.

“All of the rhetoric, the saber-rattling and other distractions going on right now are [bullshit]” said Brandon Gebhardt, Wyoming’s top water negotiator. “It needs to stop.”

Despite all the calls for collaboration, state leaders didn’t use the Las Vegas conference to hold closed-door policy talks like they have in past years. Tom Buschatzke, Arizona’s water director, said the states don’t even have another meeting on the books.

“We are willing to meet with them,” he said. “We want that meeting to be something of substance.”

Looming large in the background of this week’s water talks is the unpredictability of the next presidential administration. Those water leaders said they do not expect Donald Trump’s return to the White House will shake up the Colorado River negotiation process, but some water users and onlookers say the next administration could impact the future of the river in other ways.

The past few years have seen an influx of federal spending that Nevada’s Entsminger called a “once-in-a-generation windfall.”

The Biden Administration’s Inflation Reduction Act set aside $4 billion for Colorado River work.

Some presentations at the conference felt like a bittersweet sendoff for the administration and its willingness to spend. Water leaders from around the West eulogized the work of Camille Calimlim Touton, the outgoing head of the Bureau of Reclamation, the federal agency that operates Western reservoirs.

Money from the Inflation Reduction Act has been spread far and wide across the cities, farms and native tribes that use the river’s water. While some of it has been spent on physical infrastructure, like fixing old pipes and upgrading water treatment facilities, large portions of funding have been used to conserve water, particularly in the river’s Lower Basin.

Farm districts, tribes and cities have taken federal cash in exchange for using less water and leaving it in Lake Mead, the nation’s largest reservoir.

“All these programs cost money, all this investment, all this infrastructure, costs money,” said Gina Dockstader, who sits on the board of directors for the Imperial Irrigation District in California. “Without these additional funds, these farmers can’t afford to put it in by themselves.”

While the exact details of President-elect Trump’s plans for federal spending are still coming together, he’s provided some indications that they will look different from the Biden administration’s.

Climate scientists are projecting a drier future for the Colorado River. Hannah Holm, a policy expert with the conservation group American Rivers, said the kind of water conservation programs that have been made possible by federal funding will only get more important.

“If that funding doesn’t materialize,” she said. “We just won’t be able to adapt as well to the conditions we already have, let alone the conditions that are coming our way.”

American Rivers receives funding from the Walton Family Foundation, which also supports KUNC’s Colorado River coverage.

The clock will keep ticking for states to find some common ground on the next set of rules. A snowy winter could help buy them a little bit more time and space for negotiations by raising reservoir levels with runoff in the spring, but even record-breaking snow totals would make a relatively small dent in the long-term supply-demand imbalance along the Colorado River.

Click the link to read the article on the Sibley’s Rivers website (George Sibley):

Breaking news! The Lower Colorado River Basin is threatening the Upper Basin with a ‘Compact Call’ if it does not agree to share some major cuts in river use! Well, actually the news broke a week ago – and now there’s more news: just as I was wrapping this analysis of the ‘Call’ up yesterday, the Bureau put out for our consideration five options for river management up to and beyond the 2026 termination of the ‘Interim Guidelines.’

So we’ll interrupt our out-of-the-box exploration for management options for living with a desert river in an intelligent universe, and try to figure out what’s going on back in the surreal world of the ‘Compact box’ – looking at the ‘Call’ situation here, then get into the five management options in a couple weeks after the dust has settled.

The Lower Colorado River Basin has attempted to break the stalemate between the two Compact-designated Colorado River Basins, by telling the Upper Basin that, if they do not agree to share some major cuts when the river situation grows desperate again, then in that desperate time they will issue a ‘Compact call’ on the Upper Basin to deliver the whole 7.5 million acre-feet (maf) on average they claim the Compact obligates the Upper Basin to deliver regardless of the water situation upriver.

There has been no formal Upper Basin Commission response to that threat, but Colorado’s Commissioner, and director of the Colorado Water Conservation Board, Becky Mitchell, essentially called the bluff, and put the blame for Lower Basin problems back on the Lower Basin. The Upper Basin has argued that, if the situation becomes so desperate that the Lower Basin’ share cannot be delivered without draining Powell Reservoir, then the Upper Basin users will already be experiencing extreme shortages levied by nature.

This Hobson’s choice from the Lower Basin hinges on Article III(d) of the Colorado River Compact, which says, ‘The States of the Upper Division will not cause the flow of the river at Lee Ferry to be depleted below an aggregate of 75,000,000 acre-feet for any period of ten consecutive years.’ Does this mean, as Lower Basin states will argue, that the Upper Basin has a ‘delivery obligation’ of 75 maf over any ten-year period, regardless what is happening weatherwise in the Upper Basin? Or does it mean, as Upper Basin states are likely to argue, should argue, that if the flow to the Lower Basin were to fall below that 75 maf over a ten-year period due to circumstances other than human uses in the Upper Basin states (drought, dead pool in Powell Reservoir due to excessive releases, the atmosphere’s growing ‘evaporative demand,’ et cetera), causing ‘the flow to be depleted’ below the 75 maf minimum, then responsibility for the depletion does not fall on the water users in the Upper Basin, but on changing natural processes beyond human control. The Upper Basin could, maybe should, argue that this condition in the Compact is simply a reminder to Upper Basin users, to be careful in using their 7.5 maf half of the river (cue bitter laughter), to not infringe on the Lower Basin’s 7.5 maf half of the river.

And so far as the Compact goes, that reminder is all there is. Nowhere in the Compact is there any provision for a ‘Compact call,’ or any other procedure when or if the flow at Lee Ferry (the ‘Mason-Dixon line’ between the two Basins) were to fall below that 75 maf over ten years. A ‘call,’ the reader might remember, is an unneighborly procedure in the appropriations doctrine that remains the foundation of water law in all seven Colorado River Basin states: if downstream water users with senior rights are not able to get all of their appropriated water, they can place a ‘call’ on upstream users with junior rights, who have a legal obligation to let enough water go past their headgates to fill the seniors’ rights.

A seven-way division of the use of the river, however, proved to be nearly impossible. Each commissioner had come with the charge to protect their own state’s glorious future, to develop their vast acreage of potentially irrigable land, their mineral resources, et cetera. No factual studies existed to support the glorious visions. And when the water requirements for those visions were all added up, they would have required a river half again larger than even the overly optimistic flow numbers provided by the Bureau of Reclamation.

The Bureau hovered around the Compact meetings, eager to ‘make concrete’ the final purpose stated in that Compact preamble: ‘to secure the expeditious agricultural and industrial development of the Colorado River Basin, the storage of its waters, and the protection of life and property from floods.’ The Bureau wanted to build big dams on the Colorado River, and ‘expeditious agricultural and industrial development’ was the rational cloak the Bureau and the commissioners could throw on over the romantic urge to just take on the conquest of Fred Dellenbaugh’s ‘veritable dragon’ of a river.

Herbert Hoover, U.S. Secretary of Commerce and chair of the Compact Commission, and an engineer by training and romantic inclination, also wanted to build big dams. And when the commissioners grew frustrated at  their failure to resolve an equitable seven-way split of the use of the river after several days of looking at magical numbers, he worked hard to keep them from just dropping the whole idea, reminding them that Congress would not approve funding for Colorado River projects until the seven states all felt satisfied that a share of the river would be there for them when they were ready to grow like California.

Still, he was unable to pull them together for a serious working meeting until November, nearly the end of the year they had given themselves to create their interstate compact. He was able to lure them with an idea he and Delph Carpenter, Colorado’s commissioner, had cooked up over the summer: instead of the currently impossible seven-way division based on vague visions, they would work out a two-way division, dividing the river into two Basins, the four tributary states mostly above the river’s canyon region as an Upper Basin, and the three states mostly below the canyons as a Lower Basin, and each Basin could have the use of half the river, to divide further among each Basin’s states at their leisure.

Holed up at the posh Bishops’ Lodge just north of Santa Fe, with 28 formal meetings in 11 days and who knows how many off-the-record breakfast and bar caucuses and drafting sessions, they came up with a Compact that no one loved, but six of the seven thought they could live with, to satisfy Congress that they were all on the same page.

The seventh state was Arizona. Arizona’s commissioner, W.S. Norviel saw from the start that this two-basin idea caged the thousand-pound gorilla, California, to the satisfaction of the four Upper States, but left his state in the cage with the gorilla. He signed off on the Compact – possibly so Hoover would let them go home – but his state legislature refused to ratify the Compact. And all the other six states only ratified it after months of persuasion that it was as good as they were going to get.

Congress, on the other hand, was sufficiently infected with the romance of conquest to be willing to ratify the Compact with only six of the seven states on board. The next step was the Boulder Canyon Project Act in 1928, clearing the way for the construction, begun under President Hoover, of Hoover Dam, Parker Dam, the Imperial Weir Dam and the All-American Canal – a massive project that was about the only thing happening in America in the Great Depression, and which was adopted by the Roosevelt administration as the model for the Public Works Program and several other New Deal programs to put America back to work on big visions.

But at the base of all that is the rushed and rickety Colorado River Compact, the ricketiness of which was acknowledged by most of the commissioners – and by Hoover himself, who in one of the later November compact meetings, summarized the emerging compact as ‘a temporary equitable division, reserving a certain portion of the flow of the river to the hands of those men who may come after us, possessed of a far greater fund of information; that they can make a further division of the river at such a time, and in the meantime we shall take such means at this moment to protect the rights of either basin as will assure the continued development of the river.’ (Italics added) If the legal and political infrastructure isn’t quite in place – never mind: go ahead and build the physical structure anyway.

We have the whole chain of laws, subsequent compacts, court decisions, interim guidelines and other fixes that have tried to shore up the Compact – the Law of the River – but nothing that really addresses the matter of the 7.5 maf promise to both basins that the river cannot support – and that the Lower Basin now seems to be considering, on the basis of that Article III(d) obfuscation, as an appropriated right that the gives them a kind of seniority over the Upper Basin.

Isn’t that what this ‘Compact Call’ threat is? Hasn’t the Lower Basin essentially tried to graft the Compact onto the appropriations doctrine in order to threaten the Upper Basin with a ‘Compact call,’ despite the expressed intent of the Compact to create an equitable division that would preclude post-Compact appropriation calls between states?

I’ll leave it there, hoping that someone with a greater fund of information can explain this to me. Watch the ‘Comments’ section here.

And then we’ll dig into the Bureau’s recommendations in a week or two. And forget, for the time being, trying to think outside the Compact box; it demands our attention, love it or not.